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Enjoying my dwarf berserker a lot, he's becoming quite the little killing machine, although I'm not sure how the almost complete lack of defense (because, berserker) is going to perform in the middle-late game, if I get that far (he's level 11 now, but at least so far I'm pretty comfortable taking on monsters 3-4 levels above him).

Melee have the same problem as in most roguelikes. When you start meeting multiple casters you really feel the lack of ranged attacks or mobility. Talents earned from escort quests mitigate this somewhat if you're lucky with the classes that crop up. I recommend maxing out Rush as soon as possible. If you make it to level 30 I'd suggest Giant Leap as your first Prodigy choice. I've been using it on a Shadowblade and it's amazing.

Melee have the same problem as in most roguelikes. When you start meeting multiple casters you really feel the lack of ranged attacks or mobility. Talents earned from escort quests mitigate this somewhat if you're lucky with the classes that crop up. I recommend maxing out Rush as soon as possible. If you make it to level 30 I'd suggest Giant Leap as your first Prodigy choice. I've been using it on a Shadowblade and it's amazing.

Step Up is a good skill too, it essentially gives you a chance to get a Movement Infusion effect every time you kill something.

I tried this game and it's worse than I remembered. For me it's incredibly dull. All sorts of cliches and overused mechanics, fundamentally boring combat which they attempt to spice up with status effects and melee spells. They are using so many status effects they are thinking in terms of them. And I absolutely hated the popup-infested, patronizing tutorial.

Ameritrash design philosophy. Immediately I was assaulted by a swarm of different-looking, differetly named and sounding creatures. Which were indistinguishable in combat - oh yeah, trolls were a bit tougher. A far cry from Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The interface looks nice, and that's it.

I assume that, given how much everyone loves it, there must be a point where Stone Soup suddenly becomes amazing, because I played a few levels and it was the most boring roguelike I've ever played.

I'm not sure either, but I guess it's because it's fairly accessible, fair and has good levels of depth in it. I've always preferred (net)Hack, ADoM and Angband (and its variants), but they are different breed - wild, dangerous and rough mistresses, so to say. And well, I've always loved ADoM's atmosphere and the "background corruption radiation"-thing. Different strokes for different folks.

There's no need to exist in a black and white world where one game must rule them all. I enjoy both Stone Soup and Tome as different games that overlap in areas that are of interest to me - loot, character progression and loot. Tome is lacking some of Stone Soup's personality and crazy randomness (although I'll play Elona if I want to taste real bat-shit lunacy). As someone who prefers melee classes Tome's combat is more interesting to me but in a few weeks someone will mention Dredmor and I'll go play that for a few days instead, then ZangbandTK will get its turn and the cycle will loop on indefinitely.

I assume that, given how much everyone loves it, there must be a point where Stone Soup suddenly becomes amazing, because I played a few levels and it was the most boring roguelike I've ever played.

I find it a pretty dull as well. There are some great ideas in terms of how to design a RL without grinding, but the lack of enemy and item variety makes it pretty uninteresting for most of the time. Not nearly as dull as most Angband variants, though. Cautious play in Angband is awful.

I really like what ADOM and TOME do with quests that stay pretty consistent. There's something about having intermediate goals with rewards that appeal to me.

TOME edges out every other RL I've played because of the variety and number of rare spawns and interesting loot generation. It also has classes that play quite different and have multiple successful ways to build them. The intelligent way it handles auto-movement (the z key) is the clincher, and I don't think I can go back to RLs that don't have something similar.

I find it a pretty dull as well. There are some great ideas in terms of how to design a RL without grinding, but the lack of enemy and item variety makes it pretty uninteresting for most of the time. Not nearly as dull as most Angband variants, though. Cautious play in Angband is awful.

Item variety could be a lot better, but enemies are fine. Early on you encounter creatures that move at varying speeds, can or can't use items, ranged weapons, doors, use hit&run tactics, cast spells, teleport. Also enemies you must run away from.
Midgame monsters are relatively boring, but monsters identified as boring are constantly reworked or removed.

Tome has combat very similar to Angband in one aspect: laaaarge areas, swarms of same-y monsters.

I really like what ADOM and TOME do with quests that stay pretty consistent. There's something about having intermediate goals with rewards that appeal to me.

For me it kills replayablity. I know what's going to happen, and what I must do each time I die. In Crawl, not only branches have a wide range of level they can appear on - some branches are not guaranteed at all.

TOME edges out every other RL I've played because of the variety and number of rare spawns and interesting loot generation. It also has classes that play quite different and have multiple successful ways to build them. The intelligent way it handles auto-movement (the z key) is the clincher, and I don't think I can go back to RLs that don't have something similar.

Try POWDER.

The 'z' key is 'o' in Crawl and called auto-explore. It appeared as a patch to Crawl years ago, and was available in Nethack even earlier. Crawl is not the right game to condemn for the lack of auto-explore. In general, most interface improvements in roguelikes come from Crawl.

Looks nice, it reminds me of an old game I played about 20 years ago.
Can't remember the name though, it was also a top-down 2d rogue-like with rpg elements and when you died
the text said "Another one bites the dust...". ring a bell for anyone?

Oh my god, I remember playing this when I was about seven and not really knowing what was going on but I still loved it from the moment I started. I got it as part of some collection of software along the lines of "the best windows 3.1 software collection" which had this along with a bunch of other great games and probably some word processing stuff, but who cares about them!

I really wish I hadn't seen this thread yesterday evening so I wouldn't be so tired this morning.

Started the Adventures of Angry Pants the Halfling Beserker and he's doing just fine so far. Left him alive at level 6 in the wee hours of the morning although I will probably witness his gruesome death this evening. This is my first proper RL so I haven't yet warmed to the idea of permadeath. I've gotten somewhat fond of the little bugger and the way he merrily dances around Trolls while stabbing them in the groin with his tiny 2-handed sword.

My only gripe is the advanced tutorial which for some reason makes you feel like and idiot school child instead of just telling you straight up what arcane game mechanics are at work.

The 'z' key is 'o' in Crawl and called auto-explore. It appeared as a patch to Crawl years ago, and was available in Nethack even earlier. Crawl is not the right game to condemn for the lack of auto-explore. In general, most interface improvements in roguelikes come from Crawl.

Oh, I'm definitely not condemning Crawl for that! Crawl was the game that introduced me to the usefulness of the key, and handles it as well or better than TOME (but is probably harder to program, due to the need to conserve moves for food rationing).

Hmmm... it's been over a year since I ran DCSS. Maybe it's time I gave it another go.

Honestly, If I was you I'd rather try POWDER instead. It is clearly inspired by Crawl and shares many - but not all - design principles. You should feel at home and have a breath of fresh air at the same time. Ironically, POWDER doesn't have auto-explore, but it has the run command ('R').